1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet supplying apparatus including a sensor for automatically identifying a type of a sheet recording medium (which will hereinafter simply be called a “recording sheet”), and to a recording apparatus (which will hereinafter be referred to as a “printer”) mounted with this supplying apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Over the recent years, an image quality that is as beautiful and definite as a silver-film photograph has been required of a color inkjet printer and is now getting close to this level. Therefore, demands for printing photos of a postcard size, an L-size, etc. are increasing at home.
Contrivances have been required of recording mediums, and for realizing a silver-film photographic tone, recording sheets of which surface states exhibit a glossy tone, a semi-glossy tone, a matte tone, etc., have been developed. So, a user can select a favorite type of sheet.
Herein, generally in the different types of recording sheets, a coloring state and an ink absorbing state often differ depending on materials coated over their surfaces. It is therefore ordinary to optimize color image processing and an ink injecting amount by changing them for each type of the recording sheet (which will hereinafter also be called a “sheet type”). The selection of this optimization is processed on a printer driver as software stored on a host computer (which may hereinafter be termed a “PC”) connected to the printer. Then, it is preset that the user performs the operation of selecting which recording sheet is now to be used and has a necessity of conducting operations such as selecting a recording target sheet type on an operation screen of the printer driver when printing. This operation is troublesome and might be easy to induce a mistake on the side of an unaccustomed user. Hence, printers each mounted with a sheet type discriminating sensor for automatically discriminating the recording sheets, have been developed in recent years. A typical discriminating means for discriminating between the sheet types is an optical sensor disclosed in, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,109,236. A print (a record of an image) suited to the recording sheet discriminated by the discriminating means is automatically obtained, and therefore the operation mistake can be prevented.
Further, it is also required that the user inserts the recording sheet to be recorded into a sheet supply stacking portion (which is generally one portion) of the printer and thus effects the printing. It is, however, assumed as a normal using condition to separately use the sheets such as employing the plain paper at a certain time and a photographic sheet at another time. Accordingly, after conducting photographic tone printing, this photographic sheet should be removed and replaced by the plain paper, or the operations reversed to those described above should be performed.
Thus, when replacing the recording sheet, there is a necessity of keeping the recording sheet removed. At this time, if, for instance, the photographic sheet is stored in a naked state, the sheet might unpreferably be affected by dusts and external light, and it is therefore troublesomely required that the sheet be inserted back into the original storage bag, etc. and thus stored.
In this respect, the inconvenience described above can be obviated by providing two sheet supply ports respectively for A4-sized plain paper and the L-sized/postcard-sized photographic sheet, also providing independent sheet supplying mechanisms at the respective sheet supply ports, and further respectively incorporating the sheet type discriminating sensors therein. It, however, follows that the manufacturing cost rises and the apparatus is, as a matter of course, upsized.